![]() "I do believe, as Scripture says, my times are in His hands," Warren said. The project aims to fulfill "Jesus's call to make disciples of all nations" by mobilizing the global church to ensure everyone has access to God's word. Warren's condition has not deterred him from his current ministry objective, leading the Finishing the Task Coalition. I'm not in a wheelchair, but the bottom line is it's difficult to move around." The problem is sometimes I feel like I am this brain on fire, and I'm like in a wheelchair. But it hasn't changed the way that I think. "It leaves all my major muscles in pain, pretty much, 24 hours a day," he said. However, he admitted that the illness is "debilitating" and causes him constant pain. The 69-year-old author of The Purpose Driven Life shared that he has been in a two-year-long battle with an autoimmune disease, which he assured is not life-threatening and won't last past three to five years. Warren, who co-founded the Saddleback Chruch in California alongside his wife, Kay, appeared on " The Stetzer ChurchLeaders Podcast" Wednesday to discuss his new book and ministry goals after retiring from Saddleback Church last year. Retired megachurch pastor and bestselling author Rick Warren revealed in a podcast this week that he has been battling an autoimmune disease for the past two years. “It’s something like Steve Jobs leaving Apple,” Smoller said.Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest speaks at the Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting in Anaheim, California, on June 14, 2022. Now, Saddleback Church faces a daunting task: finding a new face for the church. He didn’t always fit in with conservatives, either: he dedicated money to helping people with AIDS, opposed the use of torture and worked to combat global warming. Obama’s choice of Warren as his invocation speaker drew the ire of civil rights groups and gay rights activists, who criticized Warren for supporting Proposition 8, the state constitutional amendment that would have banned same-sex marriage. Warren’s time as pastor wasn’t without controversy. ![]() Matthew had battled “dark holes of depression” and mental illness, Warren told his congregation at the time, also posting his thoughts on his Twitter account, which now has 2.2 million followers. In 2013, Warren’s 27-year-old son, Matthew, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Smoller added that compared to previous megachurch pastors, Warren is less focused on wealth and more “transparent and authentic.” He said this could be partly attributed to Warren’s experience with tragedy. How many priests in Orange County can you name?” “People became more attracted to the individual rather than, say, the liturgy. “These people are ‘charismats,’” Smoller said. Warren emerged as one of the key early figures in Orange County evangelicalism - a roster that included Paul and Jan Crouch, who founded Trinity Broadcasting Network, and Robert Schuller, founding pastor of Crystal Cathedral, said Fred Smoller, associate professor of political science at Chapman University in Orange County. In this “Warren-ified,” celebrity evangelicalism, churches are often defined by a single face, Hall said. “Rick Warren is the pope of a version of American evangelicalism,” said Amy Hall, associate professor of Christian ethics at Duke Divinity School. Warren is both the proponent and product of the American evangelical megachurch movement- a movement characterized by multimillion-dollar buildings, enormous congregations and iconic leaders. Over 200,000 church leaders studied the principles in that book, according to the Saddleback Church website. In 1995, he published “The Purpose Driven Church,” part of his effort to export Saddleback’s megachurch pattern to other congregations. Warren’s megachurch model became a paradigm for other church leaders. Time magazine flashed his face across its cover. He interviewed national leaders like George Bush and John McCain, spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and hosted Rwandan President Paul Kagame at the Lake Forest campus. except the Bible, according to Tanya Luhrmann, an anthropology professor at Stanford who has written about American evangelicals. While leading his church, Warren achieved influence in other ways: he became a bestselling author of “The Purpose Driven Life,” a book that sold more hard copies than any other in the U.S. ![]() Over 30,000 tune in each week to hear Warren speak. He gave the invocation at President Obama’s inauguration in 2009. What began as Rick and Kay Warren’s home Bible study exploded to over a dozen campuses in California - including the 120-acre main campus in Lake Forest - as well as churches in Argentina, Hong Kong, Germany and the Philippines. Over the next few decades, Warren transformed his church into a behemoth of evangelical Christianity. ![]()
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